ABSTRACT
English social criticism develops from Protestantism, but it represents a significant departure from its original inspiration. Protestantism would seem a less likely breeding ground for social criticism than Roman Catholicism. Social criticism becomes possible with the advent of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, which sponsor the revival of prelapsarian man in the cultural consciousness. The time of the Reformation is an often conscious analogue for the nineteenth century in the mind of the English social critic. The ordeal of Luther that had its issue in a conversion is an analogue to Teufelsdrockh's personal crisis in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, a seminal work in the rich body of English social criticism. The Reformation, for Carlyle, is less a historical accident than a prototype for recurrent renewals of the human spirit. For Arnold the work of reformation will be done by a "saving remnant", analogous to the apostles that spread the gospel of Christ.
